yesterday i wanted to make a small transaction of 0.15 BTC. the official client wanted to have 0.0025 BTC fee.i declined this.

today i just wanted to make the same transaction but now the client wants 0.003 BTC fee.how is this possible?

there have been no other transactions to my wallet since yesterday.

Are you sure? I can't recall mine ever asking for less than .005 BTC.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

Transaction fees vary depending on several non-obvious and seemingly arbitrary factors. If you have recently received a large number of small payments (eg, from a faucet), these coins are considered "low priority" (to discourage people from spamming the network with such transactions) and spending them requires a higher fee than normal. Also, transactions requiring several "input" coins take up more data, again requiring a higher fee. It's semi-random which coins the client uses when making a transaction, so the fees will appear random as well, but there is a method to its madness.

Foxpup has it. There is no single fee. The mandatory fees are calculated by the client based on the transaction inputs. The number of inputs (and thus tx size not to be confused with value) and the age of the coins determine the mandatory fee.

The reason you are getting hit with higher fees is your transactions are seen by the network as the most dangerous. They are very large (in terms of bytes) and very low value (in terms of BTC).

A rule of thumb is One Bitcoin Day to avoid mandatory fees. If you receive 1 BTC and wait 1 day it will be old enough to avoid being charged the mandatory fee (of course you can still add an optional fee to increase processing). If you are spending 10 BTC input the time would be 1/10th of a day (~2.4 hours). If you are spending a 0.1 BTC input you need to wait 10 days for the input to be old enough to avoid fees.

Note: The the One Bitcoin Day is only an approximation. In reality priority is calculated based on blocks so if you want to use the real formula it is:

Code:

priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units * input_age)/size_in_bytes

value is in satoshis (0.00000001 BTC)age is in blockspriority must be >= 57,600,000 to be considered high priority.

yesterday i wanted to make a small transaction of 0.15 BTC. the official client wanted to have 0.0025 BTC fee.i declined this.

today i just wanted to make the same transaction but now the client wants 0.003 BTC fee.how is this possible?

there have been no other transactions to my wallet since yesterday.

Are you sure? I can't recall mine ever asking for less than .005 BTC.

Don't you mean .0005?

Maybe so...

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

Foxpup has it. There is no single fee. The mandatory fees are calculated by the client based on the transaction inputs. The number of inputs (and thus tx size not to be confused with value) and the age of the coins determine the mandatory fee.

The reason you are getting hit with higher fees is your transactions are seen by the network as the most dangerous. They are very large (in terms of bytes) and very low value (in terms of BTC).

A rule of thumb is One Bitcoin Day to avoid mandatory fees. If you receive 1 BTC and wait 1 day it will be old enough to avoid being charged the mandatory fee (of course you can still add an optional fee to increase processing). If you are spending 10 BTC input the time would be 1/10th of a day (~2.4 hours). If you are spending a 0.1 BTC input you need to wait 10 days for the input to be old enough to avoid fees.

Note: The the One Bitcoin Day is only an approximation. In reality priority is calculated based on blocks so if you want to use the real formula it is:

Code:

priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units * input_age)/size_in_bytes

value is in satoshis (0.00000001 BTC)age is in blockspriority must be >= 57,600,000 to be considered high priority.

Transactions are exempt from fee calculation both of the following are truea) the tx is less than 10KBb) ALL (including change) outputs are >= 0.01 BTC

Or you can approximate as One Bitcoin Day.

Is the system of transaction fees of bitcoin described in detail somewhere or does everyone has to go over the code to understand what's going on? The mystery of BTC fees was the first what I tried to understand since I started with bitcoin last year.

Note the mandatory fees aren't intended as revenue producing mechanisms. Supply and demand, with users paying miners for priority processing will be the basis for a fee economy. The purpose of mandatory fees exist to protect the network. If your transactions "look spammy" you will get hit with a fee. If your tx never look spammy you will never pay a fee. The mandatory fees ensure that if someone tried to destroy Bitcoin by spamming it they would quickly rack up some massive tx costs and have little to show for it.

Note the mandatory fees aren't intended as revenue producing mechanisms. Supply and demand, with users paying miners for priority processing will be the basis for a fee economy. The purpose of mandatory fees exist to protect the network. If your transactions "look spammy" you will get hit with a fee. If your tx never look spammy you will never pay a fee. The mandatory fees ensure that if someone tried to destroy Bitcoin by spamming it they would quickly rack up some massive tx costs and have little to show for it.

understood this now better! we have to look always also on the bad guys. thank you very much!